SOMETHING SERIOUS: Collage (My 9/11 Tribute)

This Sunday, I walked through Greenwich Village. There, on a wall facing Dagostino’s supermarket, was a striking, but strangely decorative collage. Photographs, names, birth dates, poems, phone numbers, but mostly faces. I studied every single one. The loving father with his little daughter perched on his shoulders so she could see the passing parade floats. The pet-lover overtaken by her litter of kittens. The son, first in his family to graduate from college, smiling awkwardly in his ill-fitting cap and gown. Or the perky, but conservative girlfriend doing her “perfect photograph” pose in front of some important-looking European monument. Any one of those faces could have been mine. And in a way, I guess, it was.

As I continued walking, I had only a vague recollection of how important my problems were just one week before. Did I gain perspective? Did I really learn something? Or will this pass, like so many things before it, and life will go back to the way it was? I hope not. I hope I never forget the flood of warmth and humanity that swept across the dusty, smoky remains of a once proud corner of New York. Like those Indiana firefighters, one third of their entire force, who rushed here to help our own dig feverishly through the steel and rubble hoping to save just one more life. I hope I don't forget the tears I shared with the devastated CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald as he wept uncontrollably confronting his pain and guilt over the 700 employees, friends, he will never see again. But for every image of heroes waiting countless hours to donate blood, there will always be that indelible memory of young Palestinian children rejoicing in the streets.

Through it all, I walked on with a tempered hope, but hope nonetheless, that the lives we lost would not go to waste. Perhaps this is not the time or place to recount our lessons, but they are as much about ourselves as they are about violence, diplomacy or anything in between.